On Saturday night we all hiked up to a sauna in the woods on the edge of Lake Jyväsjärvi to check out a true Finnish sauna. The girls and guys each have their own sauna, much to Mike's satisfaction. (Shoutout!!!) Before you enter a sauna you have to shower and they had these little paper toweley things for us to sit on inside the sauna so your sweat (and holy shit, do you sweat) doesn't get all over the place. I've never been in a sauna before, but I knew they were hot. I was expecting hot. I was expecting to sweat my nuets off and die of thirst and all that jazz. What I was not expecting was for my body to feel like it had immediately burst into flames and perspire like I would never imagine possible! The air in that sauna was so hot and dry my throat felt hot when I inhaled. I attempted to breathe through my nose but my nostrils couldn't take it! The chain of my beautiful necklace from my thweets was burning my skin but I didn't want to take it off for fear of losing it so I just held it up up away from my neck. (something to ponder: It burned my neck but not my hands....?) There were these big containers/heaters (I assume) of rocks and boy can those puppies heat! The thermometer read 112 degrees Celsius. After a few minutes and we all felt like raisins, we ran outside to the lake! Our Finnish tutors recommended we rub snow on our mostly naked bodies (we wore bikinis but traditionally you go into saunas naked), and we did it and it felt awesome. We stood outside for a minute until our toezies hurt and then we ran back into the shower and the sauna. The second time didn't seem quite as hot, but I think it was more that I knew what to expect more than anything. When my body had squeezed out as much sweet as possible, I ran back outside and jumped into the frozen lake! (Ok, so I didn't jump, I walked down the stairs into the hole cut into the lake but still. Come talk to me when you go into a frozen lake.) Once more, Alex and I ran back inside into the sauna to melt. By the way, girls really are tougher than boys. Most of them didn't even touch the water, let alone get in it. A few got in but the rest were too weeny to walk down the slippery ice slope barefoot and submerge their manhoodliness in the icy depths of Lake Jyväsjärvi. There was another sauna at this place too...a more traditional, old school style one called a smoke sauna. Me no likey smoke saunas. It is literally a hot ass room filled with smokey smoke. As soon as I walked in my nostrils burned and my mouth tasted like an ashtray so I left. I'm all for traditional things, but not that one. After showers and whatnot the ESN (Erasmus Student Network...they plan all our parties and get togethers and trips. They're pretty awesome!) had lots of little nibblies and drinks for us and a fire to relax by...and HOTDOGS to cook over the fire. I liked the sauna much better than I thought and going into the lake wasn't nearly as bad as I had imagined because you get your body SO hot before you get in. After we did it I found out that many of the Finnish people there had never even gotten into the lake sooooo booyah!
Alex and I on our walk to the sauna!
The sauna building...
The hotdog fire! nom nom nom
These dawgs were huge and if you haven't noticed, Finland is not kind to my appearance.
The walkway down to the ice hole...no pictures from when I got in though :-(
A little bit of snow on the walk home...
My roommate finally arrived last night. She is Finnish and goes to the same university here and she was back home in Oulu for winter break. I felt bad because she walked in and I had like 8 people crammed in here playing cards so that was probably a little overwhelming for her. Whoops! She seems really nice but I haven't seen her today so we shall see how that goes. Tonight is the first ESN meeting where we can get some information about the trips to Lapland and Russia so that should be good although I've already walked to campus once today and I'm lazy so that sucks. Walking in the snow is so much effort....and I'm lazy. I had a meeting with my coordinator this morning and so I have finally registered for some courses..including Finnish 1! Holla! (I wonder if that translates?) The rest of my classes seem kind of lame but school isn't really my main concern anyways..I'm abroad! (Not that its my main concern in Raleigh either :-))
Alright, enough for today. I'm FINNished.
See ya on the flip side!
*drooling* Can I have some of those hotdogs? :P So there's a particular sauna for men and women? That's great. I wish you could have taken a photograph of this smoke sauna. Smoke sauna back then, had a fire in its stove that heated the stones on top of it. There are a bunch of stones in a smoke sauna, as they need to store more heat, and once the stones are heated, the fire's put out to produce steam and to give the sensation of increased heat.
ReplyDeleteNeil Dalby